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For my son and husband, without whom I'd have never realized my life's purpose.
~~~
Year thirty three of the King's calendar
Few can say they've devoted sacrificed their lives to their work, studying in secret and among a rabble of fools I found myself forced to align myself with for safety and later sacrifice for my own ends. Decades I've put into this, from the days of my youth studying in Dalaran where I got received my first glimpse into the arts of Necromancy, to my old age where I struggle to solve unlife's most complex problems. This diary is an account of my works, as best as this old bat's memory serves, from the fundamentals I picked up from my first instructor, to the theorems and experiments I created and conducted on my own, to the present.
~~~
We begin at the very same spot I did, all those long years ago. All things that we seek to build on require a strong foundation, and this rune is that foundation for the Necromancer.
So important this rune is to us that my first assignment to my students was to commit its pattern to memory. Not until they could produce this rune in front of me and without aid would we move on.
Like all runes, they're precisely identical to certain ley line patterns that run along the surfaces of planets. I never did bother to figure out the location of the natural pattern of this rune, although I do have my suspicions. Regardless, this rune in particular is capable of containing and producing large amounts of arcane shadow, the very powers any Necromancer would need to master, which in turn allows us to study the art right away by serving as a sort of battery rather than forcing us to master the shadow beforehand.
Despite all the hard work I ask my students to put into memorizing the pattern, it's hardly ever again used after one very important point is illustrated with its use: To create a being to perform any task, the Necromancer must also understand that task on more than a fundamental level.
A task as simple as walking is often the bane of the budding Necromancer for they've never given walking any real thought, and I can't blame them. Only a toddler gives serious thought and focus to walking as he does so until it's become so natural to him that he focuses on far more interesting and complex tasks and ideas. Still, I found myself among those unable to get my first constructs to do anything but flail about on the ground in a vain attempt to stand, and so I meditated and practiced pushing myself up off of the ground and taking a few steps, paying strict attention to every muscle twitch I made in the process, until I could Will my construct to do the same. It was after this that I began to find some success in this elementary and crude form of Necromancy.
~~~
Through practice, I was eventually able to create a construct that could stand and walk about for some minutes and then return to its point of origin. Like with all areas of study, we put so much effort into learning to do something the hard way only to be given a far simpler alternative shortly afterward, and this was only slightly different. The method, which I came to refer to as "real Necromancy" for some time, involved the stealing of the soul of a living subject and fusing it into a husk. The soul, in this case, acted as a far more potent power source than our rune could ever be, and with the added bonus that the soul contained the algorithms for many simple tasks the victim knew in life, such as walking.
While the method my instructor introduced me to was simpler, it also bore grave consequences for its use. All magic corrupts in some form or another and in Necromancy that corruption is perhaps more profound than in any other school. Almost immediately after my first construct was made in this way, I felt a deathly chill sweep me as if I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of Dun Morogh. This feeling wore off almost as soon as it arrived, and I found my instructor watching my reaction closely. After convincing him that I had no intention of turning back, we continued.
~~~
I was to practice this on small animals, a supply readily available and one that wouldn't draw the eye of the authorities should they go missing, and I soon found my basement littered with the corpses of mice from the Forlorn Cavern. The task was actually quite simple to explain away to the nosy for I owned a small apothecary in the city at the time and I would test my latest recipes on them, the mice that is, often times in front of others so as to remove all doubt as to my intentions for these mice. A few minutes spent turning a few of them invisible or changing their fur to some ridiculous color was all it took to prove it.
Were it not for the fact that they, the mice, refused nourishment and gave no reaction to painful stimuli, you'd have thought these mice of mine were alive. I studied them for some months until I felt myself a master of using this method with such simple creatures and subsequently closed and sold my shop to focus on more advanced techniques of my art elsewhere.
~~~
My pockets full of gold, I set out for Duskwood under the guise that I meant to study the plant and wildlife, which I did in order to not draw any more attention to myself than I, a Gnome in a town of Humans, already had. The money I made producing and selling potions to counter the shadow was far more than enough to sustain myself during my stay there, and I made more gold in Duskwood than I did in Ironforge. Grave Moss was the primary ingredient in these potions but, with few outside of the Night Watch willing to leave the town and even fewer willing to escort an old Gnome so closely to the grave sites, I had no choice but to go out on my own for the fungi, a perfect excuse to get close to the beasts that walked the land.
I watched them from afar at first at the Tranquil Gardens Cemetery not far from the town, and they paced back and forth in a line roughly four meters in length, only ever breaking from this practice to assault any living creature that strayed too near. I found this to be identical to the crude form of Necromancy I had begun with, but unlike how I had done it, there were no noticeable Necromancers for these constructs to draw power from, and there were scores of the things wandering about so therefore it made sense that scores of Necromancers were near to maintain them. I never found a one.
~~~
A small inquiry at the town's library revealed that there was only a single known Necromancer in these woods, Morbent Fel, who made his home in the tombs of Raven Hill, and so I set out to see how closely I could get to the location without being spotted. What I found were constructs just as mindless as those at the Gardens, only several times as many. I found this quite baffling. A single construct was often quite a struggle to maintain, nevermind well over a hundred, which led me to consider three possibilities: Fel was certainly not the only Necromancer in these woods (though how they've all managed to remain hidden so long and so well was beyond me at the time), Fel had acquired an artifact so powerful and so grand as to expand his consciousness over these constructs with little strain (another theory I eventually tossed aside as mere foolishness considering I never once felt anything in these woods that came close to that level of power), or these constructs were a direct result of and sustained by the shadow that was cast over these woods all those long years ago.
In the safety of my basement, I slit the throat of a rodent and stood back, waiting to see if the darkness would raise it into a mindless beast, but hours and days and weeks passed with nothing, and so I settled with the idea that the constructs likely arose at the moment the shadow first began to sweep along Duskwood, and all those who died afterward remained dead and silent, a theory I haven't yet proven. In fact, shortly after that I considered the possibility that those who arose from their graves were a special case. The shadow may have provided the means for lost and angry souls to reanimate their old corpses for whatever reason. My theories only became more and more bizarre or downright foolish from that point on, and I didn't bother to record them for that very reason. I currently accept the idea that I'll likely never know the truth behind the phenomenon in Duskwood.
~~~
During one of these trips of mine it began to rain, and so I took shelter for the duration as I had always done. The closest that day was an old ruined house, but being so small I was able to take cover beneath what remained of the chimney. It was there, beneath my feet, that I felt a faint enchantment and pressed my hand to the bricks there. I concentrated on what it was for some time until I was able to recall the means to reveal the truth it concealed, and the stone beneath the chimney turned to wood, and I found myself standing atop a trapdoor hidden beneath a layer of charred twigs and leaves. Curiosity having gripped me, I lifted the door and peered inside, and I awoke bound within the depths of the tombs I had uncovered.
Masked men and women stood around me in the torch-lit chamber, my vision slowly returning but never better than a blur for they had taken my glasses for good measure, and I was asked a barrage of questions. Who was I? Why was I there? How did I stumble upon the location? Question after question, and here I was suffering a splitting headache from trying to see in the poor lighting and the blow that had welcomed me. Were it not for the names I had spoken, De Vladren and Rotgrip, my old master and instructor, they'd no doubt have added my corpse to their stores. I was berated by the former most severely, but allowed to remain among them to continue my work. Miles upon miles of winding tunnels and chambers whose walls were lined with shelves of thousands of texts, all beneath Duskwood and parts of Deadwind, were now at my disposal, and I eventually came to be so trusted that I was given the prestigious role of Caretaker.
I regret having accepted.
Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the perks that came with the role, my name spreading widely throughout our community even into some of our associates in Tirisfal, but I did lose quite a bit of time tending to my new responsibilities that I would've preferred to have spent on my own studies. Still, what time I could spare so selfishly I did so wisely, and my greatest experiments and research were conducted in the deepest parts of the tombs.
As was always the case for us, living humanoid subjects were incredibly rare. We couldn't just kidnap travelers off the roads or from their beds and drag them into our hideout all the while avoiding detection from the ever vigilant Night Watch, and so we were forced to use the bodies of those unlucky few that accidentally stumbled upon our hideout, and those among us who showed weakness or were suspected of betrayal, but most of our experiments had to be conducted on those corpses we had sewn together from whatever body parts were still strong within the tombs.
That was, of course, until a rather large band of wannabe heroes tried to stand against us. To this day I've no idea if this group of vigilantes truly thought they could succeed, but Elves and Orcs and Humans, most of whom made their homes in northern Kalimdor and whose well being was in no way affected by our existence, barged through our gates in a vain attempt to drive us out. They were met with our full force, and we harvested a good deal of bodies from the offending side while suffering few losses besides constructs on ours. But alas, the bodies didn't last very long at all, and we found ourselves once again using sub-par materials.
~~~
Now, I met an odd assortment of characters during my time there, from Kaldorei and Draenei practicing Shadow to abnormally flamboyant Forsaken, the majority of the inhabitants of these tombs could best be described as a collection of misfits. I came to be so close to a very select few of these that we came to call each other family, but as odd as they all were, they were decent enough folk, and many of them are still among my closest associates.
One of these lot, a young Human by the name of Bisen, hatched a plan to smuggle a group of individuals into what is known as the Plane of Shadows, an exact copy of Azeroth but where color and life is completely non-existent, in search of an artifact or something that she wished for herself. I, always having been one willing to risk life and limb in the name of science, having no real intention of actively seeking such an artifact unless it meant I would end up stuck in there, and deeply bothered by the severe limits imposed on my research due to a lack of proper materials and even less time for my own studies due to ensuring the tombs were secure after the assault, was perhaps the only one of the group to willingly step through the portal into this place. There we encountered powerful and complex beings born of the Shadow, wraiths and all manner of flesh constructs, that I studied closely while my companions worked to keep them from killing us.
~~~
Armed with nothing more than chalk and my wits, I'd often leave the rest of my companions to explore this plane on my own. What I discovered was that my powers not only were substantially easier and more potent in this place, but they attracted its denizens. Men and women, pale, disheveled and insane, would peer through the windows of their decrepit homes to see what I was up to or even react in a hostile manner.
One such man I easily disposed of, but what I witnessed next astounded me. His soul not only left his body, as I predicted it would, but for the first time in all my years, I could see the soul depart. Rather than dissipate, it hung in the air above him in a black mist and slowly began to take on the shape of one of the wraiths that stood as the only threat to my companions and I. Watching the transformation in awe, question after question popped into my head. Is the Shadow plane a place where the souls of the dead make their home? Perhaps only the damned, those condemned for terrible crimes in life, stay here. But then what of the bodies? Perhaps they enter this plane as these insane and disheveled humanoids and... die again only to return as wraiths. None of this made a bit of sense to me at the time or even now, but the ideas that flowed through my head at that very moment would eventually become the foundation for even greater areas of study later on.
The beast appeared to feed off of the Shadow of its surroundings, and yet I foolishly attempted to dispose of it by assaulting it with shadow bolts of my own. It grew in size with each bolt it had absorbed, and it was then I realized that to defeat the beast I would have to absorb the Shadow that sustained it, and so I did. This Shadow, so pure and so abundant and intoxicating, substantially hastened the effects that accompany prolonged use of Necromancy, but I found I was unable to control myself. I absorbed the Shadow from each and every wraith that threatened us so much so that by the time I had returned to Azeroth, my skin had aged at least four decades and all bodily functions had very nearly ceased.
I had come within meters of my own perfection.
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